25.5.09

Coming Out Of Hiding

Less than month after I last checked in, I had a nice stay at a torture chamber also known as the psych ward at a city hospital. They have a corrections facility on a separate floor. I just spent a night in their ER. It lasted about twenty-four hours, and I was surrounded by criminals in their orange jumpsuits and hand and leg restraints, and corrections officers, with their barking voices and big guns.

The nightmares have just started to let up.

It is amazing what an illusion freedom is to a person with the label "mentally ill." We (I?) live in fear that at any moment, some oblivious, nefarious, or even well meaning person will get us locked up.And once they take your shoelaces and you are behind that buzzing locked door, it's all over. You have no credibility. Juris Doctor? Yes, dear. CEO? What other delusions of grandeur do you have?Life's thrown a lot of sharp turns my way; I'm not faint of heart. But sleeping next to a guy who had a gun pointed at him all night made me jumpy. The handcuffed middle-aged man with eyes made of ice kept asking the rookie cop who arrested him to loosen his handcuffs.I prayed to a god I don't believe in: please god, please, get me out of here, and don't let this maniac manipulate this rookie into loosening his restraints, not until I'm gone at least.Wish I could say it was the first time.I can say it is likely to be the last.You see, I pulled the trigger on myself. I knew I wasn't alright. I had hit my head (and ended up with a concussion). Because my brain matters to me, I called 911. When EMT showed up, they saw the psych meds on my dresser. It took them less than ten seconds to decide I was a head case.I can't say what got me out of there in less than the usual seventy-two hours. Perhaps it was my promise to the night shrink that yes I was taking notes, that yes, I had been given the wrong meds, that yes, I did know what medical malpractice was, and my pleas to the day shrink that I had a great doctor and family just waiting to help me if only they'd let me out of the locked prison ward.Maybe it was my friends on the force.When you find yourself in a room with about thirty people, mental patients with police escorts, except for yourself, you start to contemplate some pretty desperate scenarios.But I did learn something about myself during the course of this awful SNAFU.Pushing my buttons is futile. They tried so hard, in the end I got under their skin. I'm tricky that way.

And thanks to the life I have labored my ass off to have, I've been working remotely since I have been well enough to travel (concussions are painful, terrible things). ...most recently on this swath of island, almost five hours from NYC via Jet Blue.

Wriggling out of hiding is odd. Some friends I never hid from. Some "colleagues" don't know about my life altering event, just S28 doing her thing. But I've been sitting on this too long.

And now that I've been home for two days and heading back out tomorrow, I thought I'd let the locals know why my place was surrounded by cops that day.

Nino always said, "Beware the Ides of March."It happened on the third.

Disclaimer

Publisher assumes no liability for anything that arises out of any person or entity clicking on any link that may appear on any of its websites. By clicking on any of said links, you are asserting you are competent to enter into this agreement and you understand this agreement is legally binding.